Hospital wards and emergency rooms, medical clinics, and nursing homes all have occasion for transferring a reclining patient from one flat surface to another. Typical instances of patient transfer include transfer from a bed to a gurney, from a gurney to an examining table, and from a gurney to a bed. Such transfers have been assisted by the provision of a thin, smooth, flat polyethylene transfer board which can be slid beneath a patient and then pulled from one flat surface to the other. Typically, such transfer boards are provided in a width approximating the width of a typical patient and with hand holes suitable for gripping when pulling the patient-loaded board from one flat surface to another.
In making a transfer from a bed to a gurney, by way of example, nursing staff must align the two flat surfaces side-by-side (bed and gurney), stand adjacent to the gurney, reach across the gurney and grip the patient-loaded board through the hand holes on the board, and pull the board off of the bed and across the gurney surface until the board is centered on the gurney. The person pulling the transfer board must lean over the gurney to initially reach the board and thereby exposes his/her back to excessive strain; a position of both poor posture and severe mechanical disadvantage for performing the task safely. The person pulling the transfer board risks injury to his/her neck and shoulders as well as to the back when pulling in a forwardly bent and off-balance position such as this.
In an attempt to alleviate the arm, shoulder and back strain on a worker performing this type of transfer, it has been proposed that straps be looped through the transfer board hand holes to minimize the reach when transferring patients. However, using such strap loops, places the worker in a relatively weak pulling posture in that when the loaded sled is being pulled and moves closer to the worker, there is not chance for the worker to adjust the length of the loop for maximum leverage in completing the transfer. (The overal distance that the sled must move is greater than the average length of the human arm, so one full length pull would result in the worker's arms being at the end of the pull, but the transfer requires more than a full length pull.) Use of such strap loops, also causes the worker to grip the loops and requires the worker to pull with both arms absolutely uniformly to balance the forces between the worker's arms. Typically, the worker will not pull in a balanced manner with the result that one arm/shoulder or the other bears a greater portion of the pulling load to insure that the patient-loaded board is transferred evenly onto the target surface.